Sharing disability information

What we do with your information.

On

How we store your information

We’ll store any information about your impairment and support requirements confidentially within our secure electronic database. This information will only be accessible to members of the DDSS team. 

All information will be held in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) and University guidance on data protection and processing:

  • Our lawful basis under UK GDPR for processing your information is that we have a legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.
  • Our lawful basis for processing special category data is substantial public interest
  • Our condition in law under the DPA 2018 is statutory purposes, due to our statutory obligation to make reasonable adjustments.

We hold all information in accordance with the University’s Retention Schedule. It will be kept for six years after a student completes their course. At this point, we delete it.

You have a right to request a copy of the information we hold on your record. The page below explains how to do this, and provides further information on how the University protects your privacy. 

GDPR and data protection 

How we share your information

When we start to discuss your support requirements with you, we’ll ask you to give your written consent so that we can share information about your impairment and support requirements with other internal departments. 

You have the option to give your consent to full sharing or to give your consent only to limited sharing.

If you give consent to full sharing

This means you’re happy for us to share information about your impairment/support requirements with colleagues on a 'need to know' basis (ie where it’s clear that doing so is important to ensure that you have appropriate support in place). 

To ensure your support requirements are met, we often need to share information about these requirements with colleagues, such as:

  • Staff in academic departments you’re studying in – for example, we’re likely to share a Learning Support Plan (LSP) confirming your support requirements with personal tutors, supervisors, other staff teaching on specific modules you’re taking, and staff involved in departmental pastoral support (e.g. Disability Liaison Officers) or administration (e.g. staff involved in exam boards). We may also share your LSP with Graduate Teaching Assistants (typically PhD students) if they’re involved in the delivery of modules you’re taking.
  • Staff in University services – eg the Exams Office and the Library’s Inclusive Learning Team.
  • External agencies – eg your funding body if you apply for Disabled Students’ Allowances, or a GP/Educational Psychologist so we can help you to obtain sufficient evidence that you’re disabled to implement your support. 

Where possible, we’ll limit the information we share to the minimum required in order to ensure support is in place. 

We’ll always ask you to approve your draft Learning Support Plan before we share this with staff working with you.

The vast majority of students we work with give full consent. 

If you give consent to limited sharing

You can choose to give consent to limited sharing only, for example by saying you only want your support information to be shared with a certain member of staff. 

We’ll still provide you with disability support if you do so. However, you may be unable to access the full range of support that would otherwise be available to you if the limits you place who we can share your information with prevent us from passing on your information to those who need it to implement your support.

Changing your preferences about how we share your information

You can choose to alter your preference as to how we share your information at any time by emailing us at disability.info@sheffield.ac.uk. 

Cases where we’re required to share information without your permission 

In very rare cases we might need to pass on information to a third party without your permission. This would usually only be the case if:

  • you’re under 18 and an issue arises 
  • there are concerns that you’re at risk yourself or you’re a risk to others 
  • there’s a legal requirement to disclose your information (eg to the police).

Will telling you that I’m disabled affect my University application?

Any information you disclose about your disability on your application will not be considered by the University as part of the selection process. Your application will be assessed on its academic merits alone.

Disabled applicants: How we consider your application

Any questions?

If you have any further questions about how we store or share your information, email disability.info@sheffield.ac.uk.